


The Heart Breaks Warm

by C-chan (1001paperboxes)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 07:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7676332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001paperboxes/pseuds/C-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd never been good with children. He'd never liked children. So why was it precisely that he was here, demanding the custody of the child of the whore whose life the Mayor had spared but could not save?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart Breaks Warm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Verabird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verabird/gifts).



> Love is a powerful thing, and Cosette a wonderful avatar thereof. It was fascinating, having the chance to explore what a child's love would do to him. Thanks for giving me a chance to explore it. I hope you enjoy.

It was not supposed to be this way.  
  
He did not want a child. Children were half-grown persons who were just as likely to be insufferably underfoot as anything. He had no tolerance for their misbehaviour, nor their undisciplined attitudes. There was an expectation that they could get away with more because they were so young, because perhaps they didn’t know any better. However, it took no skill to notice repeated faces with repeated cheeky gestures, growing slowly from harmless pranks to criminal behaviour.  How often did the inmates at Toulon speak of childhoods on the streets, and how many had he seen put to hard labour who once had been one of those insufferable little ones. How often had he come across gamin mocking his authority or dead of starvation and cold under a bridge?  
  
He had no idea what to do with children. He had little experience with ones his own age even growing up, and those he had encountered seemed alien to him. Little ones on the street rarely even looked at him, and more than once he’d seen a tiny person burying into their mother as he’d passed. It was all for the better, really; the less interaction necessary, the better. The easier to concentrate on his duty.  
  
Children were an anomaly: necessary for life, but inexplicable in their actions, in their very ways of being. And if there was something Javert could not stand, it was the inexplicable; things that could not be driven into some semblance of order.  
  
So why was it precisely that he was here, demanding the custody of the child of the whore whose life the Mayor had spared but could not save?

* * *

 

He dressed her in black. It seemed only fitting, the mother being just dead. If it meant a limited amount of choice and thought into dressing the child, all the better.  
  
She’d cried when she’d heard the news of her mother’s death, silently in her spot under the table. He’d seen, he’d noted, almost relieved to be dealing with the innkeeper and his wife instead. They were certainly shady, and he’d written a report on them not long after returning to the precinct. However, in prioritizing his time and energy in communicating with them, in arranging for the transfer of custody, he hadn’t had to wonder or figure out how to deal with her reactions or emotions.  
  
She didn’t say a word or shed a tear as they left, merely taking his hand and walking in his shadow until they’d reached the coach, playing quietly with the ragdoll he had gotten her after they’d left. (She’d been playing with a _knife_ , he'd realized. And while it was not the unnecessarily beautiful thing that she’d been ogling, it was at least an appropriate toy for a child her age, something more likely to nurture mothering instincts than the murder and harm of a knife.)  
  
She didn’t shed a tear in the days that followed, either. She went to school when directed, she did the chores she was expected to do. It was only at night that he heard her crying, and cry she did for weeks on end. The sobs were soft, but audible as he passed her room, as he peeked inside the door left purposely ajar.  
  
Had ever he felt so strongly about his own mother’s life or death? Had he ever felt with as much intensity as this little girl?

* * *

 

This time, he was the one who made her cry.  
  
He had been reading a most important treatise, and she’d been singing and banging as she played, making it impossible for him to concentrate. He’d waited to see if she’d correct herself once, twice, thrice, but the matter did not change and thus he was forced to take action. He’d raised his voice and scolded her for making such a racket, and she’d turned sheet white, a hiccup escaping as tears filled her eyes but otherwise going silent.  
  
The next thing he knew, she was running away, still as silent as a ghost, and it was all he could do to seat himself against the wall, halfway in a daze.  
  
He’d yelled at her and frightened her and made her cry.  
  
He didn’t get any reading done that night.

* * *

 

It was certainly easier to live with a woman around the house, even if she took the form of a young girl. His salary was stretched more than usual with a second being to provide for, so everything was required to last as long as possible.  
  
Her hands were small and deft, better at mending than his, and she didn’t seem to mind taking his shirts when a seam wore out and making them seem like new.  
  
Food was simple, and she learned beside him how to prepare it, sometimes making it on her own when business kept him away late. They had different preferences, but the food was passable no matter whom the cook, and there was something in the way she looked when he ate the dishes she’d prepared that made his chest feel tight and warm.  
  
They often cleaned together: she’d been trained to make a house sparkle, and he found comfort in a clean and orderly home. Perhaps it wasn’t quite what a normal family would do together, but it gave them a chance to get to know each other, to understand each other, to be companionable. And thus, he thought, it served its purpose well.

* * *

 

He remembers the day that she first wore colour.  
  
It was a ribbon fastened to her hat – a ribbon he had purchased for her, after questioning a subordinate on what on earth a little girl would like.  
  
It had been his first gift to her, clothes and doll nonwithstanding, and she’d taken to it immediately, claiming to love it.  
  
She’d ask for more material in time, making dresses for herself. He’d help when he could; straight seams were not difficult, and he’d managed far more than that before she’d been around. The scraps soon became friends for her first doll, and in time she’d tell him about the family she’d created, and the adventures they’d go on.  
  
He wasn’t sure that he always understood, but there was little harm in thus listening and humouring. The joy in her storytelling alone made it worthwhile.

* * *

 

He wasn’t sure what vexed him more: that he couldn’t remember the first time he’d seen her smile, or that it bothered him that he could not. Had she tried to offer him a shy smile sometime between receiving mourning dress to replace her rags and receiving  a doll of her very own? Had it been on their first trip to the bakery, when the woman at the counter, after recovering from shock, had given her pain au chocolat as a special treat? Had it been on her first day of school, or while she was humming around the house, or at breakfast a week after the nightly tears dried up for good?  
  
No matter when it was, he noticed as they became more common, as the girl found happiness and joy within the simple dwelling that he – that they – called home.

* * *

 

Somewhere inside, he expected her to be just like the children on the street. Even the timid ones would become wrong, given enough time. Those who fought towards righteousness would try to find work, would give their lives for a profession. Some, like himself, would be successful. They were the lucky ones. Most, the children of thieves and whores, of gypsies and worse, would end up wasting away, if not outright dead then at least vanished from the streets before twenty years had past.  
  
Most, perhaps, would end up broken; perhaps fit for society, but certainly unfit for the nurturing of others.  Very few ever learned compassion. _He_ certainly never did.  
  
And yet here was this child, the daughter of a whore brought up in a den of vipers and delivered into the hands of one who was likewise broken from a childhood of streets and jails and gutters. And where he was lucky enough to survive, she somehow thrived.  
  
And perhaps, through her tutelage, he’d learn to do the same.


End file.
